


Mars is Bright

by MzMinola, ShadowEtienne



Series: Star Wars Harry Potter Fusion [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canonical Character Death, Gen, and possibly friendship tags, both franchises are technically PG but we wanted Han to be able to swear, canon relationships are present but untagged due to lack of focus, character tags to be added as story updates, our goal is to keep the HP canon intact, pulling from both canons, some disturbing imagery, with all this Star Wars stuff going on in the background
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 14:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16064849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MzMinola/pseuds/MzMinola, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowEtienne/pseuds/ShadowEtienne
Summary: Not so long ago, in a galaxy right here, the wizarding world failed Anakin Skywalker, and he failed Padmé Amidala. Years later, their children try to put things right.





	1. Our Story Begins

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to alexmaybe for the brainstorming and feedback!

When Anakin Skywalker is eleven years old, he finds out all the strange things he’s done, and all the strange things that happen at the edges of the city’s underworld, really were magic after all. He’s going to learn how to do it on purpose, and finally find out where Watto hid his mom’s visa and passport, and get them back for her. Who cares about underage magic restrictions? Not Anakin, that’s for sure.

A beautiful girl on the train tells him and the other Muggleborns all about the houses, but not what hers is. She’s got a silver prefect’s badge, and _glides_ across the rough path to guide them to the boats.

The Sorting Hat flips through memories of hard work to make his mom’s life easier, flips through his ambitions, tells him they’re derived from loyalty and a sense of justice, not selfishness like Watto always sneered, and yells out _HUFFLEPUFF!_

The beautiful girl from the train applauds proudly from the Slytherin table, and helps him get over the trick stairstep his first day of class. Anakin learns to fly, learns to turn matchsticks into needles, and that the kind of bullies who call him “Mudblood” _never_ expect a fist to the eye instead of a hex.

There’s a very uncomfortable Muggle child services official waiting at King’s Cross in June of 1968. Squibs might be shunned, but that only lasts until the wizarding world _needs_ them for something, such as dealing with Muggle affairs without letting more Muggles into the know. The official is here to escort him to a group home; his mother was deported while he was at school.

He’s only twelve, he doesn’t know how to track people down yet. He gets back to Hogwarts in the fall, throws himself into his studies so hard the teachers stop calling him a “nuisance” and start calling him a “prodigy” instead.

Prodigies are allowed to do independent study, to skip years if they pass the tests, to take their OWLs in fourth year and their NEWTs in fifth. Anakin Skywalker begins Auror training at age sixteen in 1972. Pity his mentor Qui-Gon Jinn dies after just a few days, nasty business that, but it gets Obi-Wan Kenobi a field promotion and a promising trainee.

Wizengamot member Palpatine is so supportive of the lad that a few rumors of illegitimate parentage start. It’s quickly agreed that even if his father wasn’t Palpatine, it must have been _some_ wizard, because how else would someone supposedly Muggleborn be so powerful?

~

Padmé Amidala has had exactly one ambition in her entire life; become the youngest Minister of Magic ever. It’s a good ambition, she thinks, because it encompasses all of her goals. Reform, equality, oh, all sorts of democratic things!

General feeling in Slytherin is that she’s an absolute nutcase blood-traitor who’s going to die doing something embarrassingly Gryffindorish.

No one’s said that to her face since she hexed Bellatrix Black through a wall, though, when Bellatrix tried to stop her sister Andromeda going to Hogsmeade with Ted Tonks. Especially since the teachers made her a prefect _after_ that. And she’s got that scary-intense inter-house girl-posse who’ve all got Ministry ambitions. And she spends her summers visiting pen-pals from Beauxbatons.

Frankly, she probably _is_ going to end up Minister of Magic (if she doesn’t piss off a hippogryph first) and then it wouldn’t be too cunning to be known as the prat who called her a nutter and insulted her Hufflepuff minion in sixth year, would it?

~

Anakin first gets puts on Padmé protection detail when she introduces a bill to the Wizengamot to fight Muggleborn discrimination in the workplace.

“Can’t stop progress just because some twit with a pretentious name is sending death threats!” Padmé tells Anakin briskly when he shows up to ward her rooms at the Naberrie estate. “When you’ve finished with that, would you mind sparring with me? If I spend another minute going over this thing for loopholes I’ll start hexing it.”

They get married a while later. Keep it a secret. He’s a famous Auror and she’s a controversial member of the Wizengamot. Neither of them wants to turn the other into a target. It’s the middle of a war, secrets just seem safer. They don’t even tell Obi-Wan.

It’s the same year the overworked Auror department gives Anakin his very own trainee (Ahsoka is not entirely human and it’s _none of your business_ ).

The same year Anakin finds his mom.

Just a little too late.

“She wasn’t even a witch,” Anakin tells Padmé, his wand in a drawer because whenever he picks it up he can see the green light on his hands, and he doesn’t want her to see that light too. “Just strange. Just a strange sad woman, in the wrong place, and they killed her for it.”

He’d never cast the killing curse before. It’d been easy. He doesn’t tell Padmé that part, lets her think he let the Muggle authorities handle it. He doesn’t tell Ahsoka or anyone else in the wizarding world know about his mother at all.

They never helped him find her. Why would they care that she’s dead?

~

It’s not that Anakin _agrees_ with Voldemort. It’s just that he _does_ disagree with Dumbledore. He’s been fighting so long, and nothing ever gets better, and he can’t remember what it was like to feel something other than hate or despair.

His wife’s pregnant. He couldn’t save his mom. How can he hope to save his child?

Palpatine feeds the hatred, so Anakin feels strong, like he can _do_ something. So it’s not what his mentors or friends or wife think he should do. So what? Barty Crouch just authorized the Aurors to use deadly force, has started throwing people into Azkaban without trial. The Ministry’s corrupt and he hates Voldemort just as much as he hates everyone else but at least it’s a _change_.

~

A cunning, ambitious Slytherin pursues every path to power she hears of, so Padmé Amidala knows full well that she’s dying of hatred.

It’s very annoying. Anakin didn’t even cast anything. He just leapt to the _ridiculous_ conclusion that she’d brought Obi-Wan to _kill him_ , which was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard in her life, and then _strangled_ her. With his _hands_. He didn’t even draw his wand!

(if he had he’d be in Azkaban, because she’d always been the quicker draw of the two)

“Deep breath Padmé, you’re doing great, another push-”

Any midwife worth her salt knows to cast diagnostic spells on a mother going into labor, so when Obi-Wan left Anakin screaming from the fiendfyre (which of them had even cast it?) to rush her home, the midwife had noticed and healed the damage to her throat immediately.

She _knows_ breathing should be easy. She _knows_ it.

She also knows the strongest magic is pure emotion. That, unfortunately, the unadulterated hatred pulsing from her husband won’t leave her, that it’s finishing the job his hands started. Who needs _words_ for a killing curse?

But love can hold off death, and she loves her children. This hate will not touch them. She holds it in her chest, pushes her love into her belly with each contraction.

“Obi-Wan.” She grips her friend’s hand tight. “I want to hold them.”

Her children are warm and tiny and heavy. They don’t ease the pressure in her chest, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s a comforting weight. She can’t stay, but it doesn’t have to hurt.

“Oh, my loves.” Padmé kisses the tops of their tiny heads. “You’re going to be amazing.”


	2. Meanwhile at Hogwarts

Han Solo gets sorted into Hufflepuff in September of 1982, and by June 1989, he’s _still_ not sure all this mumbo-jumbo isn’t just someone pulling his leg. His wand doesn’t do what he wants it to nine times out of ten, people keep telling him he’s enchanted something when his wand was in some other room entirely, and that _can’t_ be right ‘cause they _also_ told him wandless magic was really hard and shit, all he did was smack the gearchain of his bike and cuss it out. So it untangled when he did that. So what? That’s _why_ you smack it. Like when the TV’s on the fritz.

Flying’s good. Flying’s worth sticking around for. Not Quidditch though, screw that teamwork shit.

Everyone who bothers to notice he exists expects him to drop out once OWLs are over, but signing up for NEWTs means two more years of free food, free room, and flying as much as he wants without casting one of those disillusionment charms he can never get the hang of.

In seventh year, Madam Hooch makes him an “after-class flight practice supervisor”, because there’s a little Ravenclaw firstie that’s just as flight-mad as Han. Luke’s been scheduling all his homework for when the quidditch teams are using the pitch, so that when _it’s_ free he is too, and Hooch needs a _break_ , but you can’t let a firstie just fly around without someone there to stop them breaking their neck if they fall off their broom.

Luke’s... _kind_ of a Muggleborn. His aunt and uncle raised him, and they’re Muggles, and he never saw magic before Hogwarts. But he’s also got some crazy uncle living in the woods outside their farm who told him his dad was an Auror. His enthusiasm for learning all about magic is _exhausting_ , but he’s a nice kid, and he doesn’t think Han is dumb for missing a lot of Muggle world stuff (like movies, air conditioning, and chocolate that doesn’t _run away_ ), so Han keeps half an eye on him off the pitch too. He scares off some bullies a couple times, and pats him on the head at the end of the year.

“Good luck, kid, ‘cause you’re gonna need it.”

Han _meant_ to become a mechanic after school. He’s been learning at the local shop back home every summer, he’s just a couple tests from some certifications. He _likes_ cars. And trucks. And bikes. And vans. And some boats. And planes. Pretty much anything with an engine that goes fast.

The problem is, well, _he_ thinks magic is a bunch of hooey, but the Ministry of Magic doesn’t, and there’s all these laws about not enchanting Muggle objects?

Look, officer, he doesn’t even have a wand. How could he enchant anything? What _happened_ to his wand? He sold it at the second-hand shop in Diagon Alley. Gotta get some start-up money for his own shop, right?

Showing up for a hearing sounds like a one-way-ticket to bad-time-town, so Han skips across the channel instead. And then gets into some trouble? But it’s fine, it’s fine, he can get out of it. And then “getting out of trouble” keeps turning out to mean “getting into some _other_ trouble”.

Long story short, Han doesn’t wind up in England again until the Quidditch World Cup provides _primo_ gambling and smuggling material (hel _lo_ , unlicensed merchandise!). He and Chewie find their way to the campgrounds without bothering with tickets to the match, and then hear about this Triwizard Tournament from Ministry officials who can’t keep their mouths shut, and hey, didn’t Chewie always wanna see Hogsmeade?

~

Leia Organa’s mom is the mayor of Alderaan, her dad is a Ministry official, and her mother is a ghost. She doesn’t get to see her much, and she can’t tell anyone outside the family why Padmé Amidala’s ghost shows up whenever she visits Dad at work, but she’s glad to know her.

Visible, audible presence of ghosts varies more wildly at the Ministry of Magic than at Hogwarts, but Bail Organa can count on seeing his old friend at least once a month. His co-workers noticed how interested she was in Leia as a baby, and expressed concern. Wasn’t that a sign of impending death? Like Auguries crying? Bail, do you need us to contact an exorcist?

Leia likes hearing the story of the time Darth Vader showed up in the Ministry lobby to kill someone. Padmé’s ghost popped up, screamed in his face, and startled him so badly he tripped into the fountain. Her mother didn’t even let _death_ stop her from fighting Death Eaters! Nobody brought up exorcists anymore after _that_.

Absolutely no one is surprised when the Sorting Hat yells _GRYFFINDOR!_

The starry-eyed boy Leia met on the train gets Ravenclaw, which she hadn’t expected for him. It means they don’t have any classes together (at least until their elective start) which is too bad, but he shows up at the library for some of her study sessions.

“I _love_ Quidditch,” Leia admits, when Luke first hears about it and enthuses all through their astronomy homework.

“Are you going to try for the team next year?” he asks.

“No, I need all the time I can get for school,” Leia says. She needs to be top of her class consistently, a prefect, and Head Girl if she’s going to have a shot at the Ministership before she’s thirty. “But maybe I can make some pick-up games sometime,” she adds hastily when Luke gives her puppy-dog eyes.

~

Auror Obi-Wan Kenobi comes out of his mysterious retirement in 1988 to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. He knows Dumbledore offered him the job because Luke’s starting at Hogwarts this year, and Albus knows how protective he is of Luke. He also knows the job’s likely jinxed, but, well, the thought of watching Luke get on that train and _not being there_ if something goes wrong is unacceptable.

Near the end of the war, when they didn’t know how close they were to the end yet, Albus and Ben used to stick around together after Order meetings to have a drink. Everyone knew what it was like to lose someone, in those days, to not know who you could trust, to constantly second guess yourself. Albus, though, knew the particular pain of betrayal by someone you love, of fighting them with everything you had, only for someone else you loved to end up dead instead.

“You’re going to have to face him sooner or later,” Albus had said back then. “Darth Vader.”

“You know who he is, then?” Ben asked. He doesn’t want to be Obi-Wan anymore, but he _has_ to be, but he doesn’t have to be himself right _now_.

Albus just _looked_ at him. Ben threw back the shot of firewhiskey and held his glass out for another.

“Trust me,” Albus said. “It will hurt just as much _later_ as _sooner_.”

Teaching entire classrooms full of children is, thankfully, _very_ different from training a handful of newbie Aurors at a time. He’s doing okay. Luke remembers to call him “Professor Kenobi” instead of “Uncle Ben”, and seems to be doing well in all his classes.

(just as mad for flying as his father, but Ben is _not thinking about that_ )

The jinx gets him the week before OWLs, when the fifth years need to fight a boggart as practice for the exams. Ben gets a bit too close, and suddenly Anakin Skywalker is writhing on the classroom floor, screaming, flames licking over him, _off_ of him towards the students-

Hufflepuff Tonks shoves him away and _punts_ the boggart (he doesn’t even see what it turns into for her). An hour later he’s in the hospital wing, holding an empty goblet that smells like a calming draught, not sure how he got there.

“I’ve got the lesson plan for the last week,” he tells Albus. “I’m sure you can find someone to administer the rest of the exams.”

He ignores the sympathetic gleam in the Headmaster’s eye and goes back to his woods.

~

Luke and Leia don’t really think of themselves as friends until sixth year. They’re friendly, sure, and they’re great study buddies! But if Leia’s homesick, she talks to other Gryffindor girls. If Luke wants to pull some crazy prank, it’s with the rest of the Ravenclaw quidditch team.

Sixth year is when the dementors patrol campus, and they start sharing nightmares.

“I can’t get enough air, in some of them,” Luke says, legs pulled up tight to himself in the astronomy tower. “And I feel like I ought to be angry but I’m just so...sad.”

Leia nods. “Sad and surprised. Like the ground fell out from under me.” She twists her fingers into her braids. “And the other ones…”

“...with the fire…”

They both shudder.

They’re just as relieved as poor Harry Potter probably is to hear Sirius Black was seen far, far away from Scotland, and that the Ministry is pulling the dementors from Hogwarts. They won’t have to spend their seventh year casting cheering charms every morning.

~

Seventh year is just a disaster from start to finish.

Quidditch is cancelled, which is a _nightmare._  They’re hosting the Triwizard Tournament, which is cool, but did they _really_ have to cancel Quidditch for it?

“ _Viktor Krum_ is in his last year at Durmstrang!” Luke raves. “You can’t tell me he’s _not_ in the Tournament and that he _wouldn’t_ want to keep up his Quidditch skills all year!”

“I’d never dream of telling you that,” Leia says. She drags him down to the Three Broomsticks for a consolatory butterbeer the first Hogsmeade weekend they get. “Oh my _god_ ,” Leia says, when they get through the door. “Your stupid _crush_ is here.”

“Biggs?” Luke asks, whipping around to look where she’s looking. Instead of Biggs Darklighter (brilliant Chaser, three years ahead of them in school, currently a reserve player for the Chudley Cannons), or even Wedge Antilles ( _also_ a brilliant Chaser, two years ahead of them, not yet drafted by a professional team), it’s Han Solo. Luke turns back to Leia. “I did _not_ have a crush on him!”

“Could have fooled me,” Leia says.

“I’m gonna go talk to him,” Luke declares.

“See?” Leia mutters, and follows.

Han is unfairly and obnoxiously attractive, which infuriates Leia. She has _better things to think about_ than some small-time criminal who flunked half his NEWTs and still argues with her whether their classes were just the result of hallucinogens in the school food.

“Then why do you keep coming with me to the Three Broomsticks?” Luke asks her.

“Someone has to keep your heart from getting you in trouble,” Leia says. Luke rolls his eyes fondly.

They’re seventh years, and for all Leia insists she needs time to study for NEWTs, she can’t ever back down from a challenge, so into the Goblet of Fire her name goes. Luke says he’s curious, and puts his name in too. They both applaud sincerely for Cedric Diggory, and then somewhat bemusedly for Harry Potter.

“Oh good, Potter’s summoned his broom,” Luke comments during the first task. “Be a shame if a Seeker that good got crispy-fried.”

“I wish I could say I couldn’t believe that they brought dragons into the school,” Leia says glumly. “And can you _please_ not say crispy-fried?” She shudders.

“Sorry,” Luke says, wincing.

Everyone goes _insane_ when the Yule Ball is announced. People are proposing all over the school, in increasingly embarrassing ways. Everyone is _giggling_. Leia nurses the tiny fantasy of someone showing up outside her Arithmancy class with a bouquet of roses, realizes there are _far_ too many people at this school she does _not_ want roses from, and asks Luke if they can go as friends.

“That sounds great!” Luke says.

Yule Ball _is_ pretty great, actually. The band is awesome, the food’s good, and Luke dances almost as well as he flies.

 _After_ Yule Ball, not so much. When they mention going together, Han gets all _weird_ ; cranky and more sarcastic than normal and _bitter_. By the end of the (shouted) conversation half the pub’s telling them to take it outside, and then Leia spins around and kisses Luke to make a point.

She’s not sure _what_ point it is, but by the look on Han’s face, she sure made it.

Exactly two weeks after that, long enough for their entire year and half the underclassman to hear Head Girl Leia Organa snogged Ravenclaw Chaser Luke Skywalker in the middle of the Three Broomsticks, they have a potions lesson.

Well, okay, they have a potions lesson every week, but _this_ time Professor Snape picks them to demonstrate a potion on. A potion that’s supposed to show how closely related two people are. The Murton twins from Slytherin get called up to put their blood into a set of three small glasses (one for each of them, and one with both their blood), and Luke and Leia to put theirs in another set of three.

“As you can see, the Murtons’ has turned dark red,” Professor Snape says, holding the two single-drop glasses up for the class. “While Organa and Skywalker’s-”

Are also dark red.

All four of them have to prick their fingers again and swap who they’re paired with, because this class _will_ see what the potion looks like with the blood of unrelated people. It’s a nice blue. Leia stares miserably at the red glasses for the rest of class, completely failing to make her own version of the potion, losing ten points for Gryffindor for inattention.

“At least he didn’t accuse of us pulling a prank and take even _more_ points!” Luke says bracingly on their way to owlery after class. They both need to write to their families.


	3. The Lars Family

When Owen Lars is eight years old, his brother Ben starts getting letters from owls.

“They’re not _from_ owls,” Ben grumps at him. “They’re _delivered_ by owls.”

When Owen’s nearly sixteen, his brother blithely asks their parents to pretend he’s dead.

“Trampled by a cow, they’ll believe that,” Ben says. “That’s only if they ask about Ben Lars, of course. My mentor said I should change my name to make it harder for dark wizards to learn about me.” Ben smiles that sunny smiles of his, the one that’s always been completely clueless about other people’s feelings.

“What’re you changing it to?” Owen asks, as their mother gets up to fretfully make more tea. “Will you have a real address now? If we need to write you? Or a telephone?”

“I haven’t picked it yet,” Ben says. “And if you don’t know, you’ll be _genuinely_ confused if someone asks for the new me. That’s very important if they’ve got legilimency or veritaserum. That’s tru-”

“Truth potion,” Owen snaps. “That’s easy. Verification, verisimilitude, and serum’s what we give the cows. I’m not _dumb_ , Ben.”

“I never said you were,” his brother says stiffly.

When Owen’s in his thirties, talking with his wife Beru if they’ve got the farm stable enough for kids, his brother shows up again for the first time in almost twenty years.

With a baby.

“His parents are dead,” Ben croaks out, before even ‘hello’ or ‘sorry for never writing or calling’ or even ‘did you repaint the fence?’. “The war got them.”

“Been in a time capsule, has he?” Owen asks. Beru takes the baby from Ben quickly, because he’s shaking like a leaf and doesn’t really seem to know how to hold it properly. “Bit fresh for a mite from the forties.”

“No, not _Grindelwald’s_ war,” Ben snaps. Oh good, they’re back to grumpy. Owen’s always done better with Ben when he’s grumpy, he never knew how to handle ‘upset’. “ _Our_ war. With He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

“Informative,” Beru says dryly, between cooing at the baby. “Sit down, we’ll have a cuppa.”

“I’ve got to make things safe,” Ben says, nodding towards the baby. “For Luke.” Then he backs right back out the door. It’s not until he’s vanished into thin air at the end of their drive that Owen realizes he never even _asked_ if they could take on a baby. Or said he _needed_ them to take on a baby.

Luke’s old enough to chase after the chickens by the time Ben shows up again, looking exactly just as awful, but at loose ends instead of itching to leave.

“You-Know-Who’s dead,” Ben declares, leaning over the fence like a neighbor instead of a nuisance.

“Who?” Owen asks. Beru and Luke are over at the other end of the garden, weeding around the pumpkins that didn’t get carved up for Jack-O-Lanterns.

“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,” Ben says.

“Right, that one.” Owen nods.

“Is that old hermit hut we used to play in still around?” Ben asks.

“The one in the woods?” Owen asks, confused by the sudden change in the conversation. He looks automatically towards the scraggly woods running along behind the farm. “Think so.”

“Wonderful,” Ben says, and the next thing Owen knows his estranged brother is living in a rundown hut in the middle of the woods that’s probably been there since the Conquest, puttering around the borders of the farm in the middle of the night, wiggling a stick and muttering weird things.

“Look,” Owen says, after dragging Ben into the kitchen for a proper cuppa. “I know you can’t exactly tell a normal therapist about all that…” he waves his hand through the air “...magical bunk, but there’s gotta be a better way to deal with this than camping out in my backyard.”

“It’s public land,” Ben says. His back’s ramrod straight, and he holds the sturdy ceramic mug like it’s made of delicate china. “And I have to be here. Your wards are atrocious.”

“You know I don’t know what that means,” Owen reminds him.

“I know you don’t,” Ben says. “That’s why you need them.”

Beru walks past with Luke on her hip. “Just don’t scare the chickens, Ben, and you can stay,” she says, and that’s that.

It doesn’t surprise Owen or Beru when Luke comes running up from the mailbox a few years later with a letter on funny paper, done up in green ink.

“There was an owl sitting on the mailbox!” Luke tells them, eyes wide and starry.

For seven years, they think that maybe they won’t lose Luke like they lost Ben. He writes all the time, he comes home for every holiday instead of just summer, he says that when he’s a professional Quidditch player he’ll get them tickets to all his matches.

There’s a bit of awkwardness Luke’s last year at school, when he writes home that a potion says him and his friend Leia are related, just as close as some twins in their class, and _maybe_ they’d think they were cousins but they’re _both_ adopted _and_ their birthdays are in the same month. Beru goes and bangs on Ben’s hut in the middle of the day demanding to know why in the hell he’d never told any of them Luke had a sister.

“Everyone was safer not knowing,” Ben says from the depths of the hut, which is really too small to have depths, and too rickety to not fall over under the barrage of an angry farmer. “In case of leg-”

“Don’t you go saying legilimency or veritaserum!” Owen yells, giving the hut a firm kick. Beru’s still pounding on the door, cussing. “Those are damn fools reasons to keep family apart!”

A terse letter arrives in June, and burns their hopes to the ground.

“They killed Cedric Diggory,” Luke writes. “I think it’s the same people who petrified Muggleborns back in fifth year. I have to do something. Professor Flitwick says I took the right NEWT courses for Aurors or the regular DMLE, so I’m applying for both. Leia’s letting me stay with her, since her place is on the Floo. Love, Luke.”


End file.
